Mike is on Sabattical. Johno on injured reserve. I have the whole website to myself!! Muwhahahahaha! Now the only person I have to contend with is Judson, and his inane comments. I will rule! I will make the most outrageous right wing statements, and no one will resist!
Sorry, did I say that out loud?
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The militia clause is not a qualifying clause - it does not change the meaning of the primary clause. At most, it explains the reason for the primary clause. In the constitution, and in state constitutions of the period, when the phrasing, "The right of the people... Shall not be infringed" always meant an individual right. When you insert "To bear arms" into that construct, it means exactly what it says. The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. That means the government shall not pass laws that infringe, or limit, my right to bear arms. Arms are weapons. An extreme reading would mean that there is no limitation on my right to bear arms - meaning that machine guns, missiles, tanks, artillery should all be legal for the citizen to possess.
The current attempts to ban various types of "assault weapons" (besides revealing the comprehensive ignorance of the writers of these laws - assault weapon means roughly, "a gun that looks very lethal" or "a gun I don't like.") are ridiculous given that among the weapons that the framers had in mind were the most advanced military long arms available at the time. At the very least, the 2nd Amendment should allow me to have fully automatic assault rifles like the M16 or AK47.
Sidearms have been traditional military arms for officers for centuries. Even a militia style reading of the 2nd amendment would have to allow handguns. And for home defense, an unwieldy long arm is not the best weapon for use in the close confines of rooms and hallways in the average home. For trench warfare in WWI, troops often used pistols and sawed off shotguns - not four to five foot long rifles. Much better for close in fighting at close range. If you live out in the country, a rifle might be appropriate, but not in the city or urban areas.
And anyway, rifles are more lethal than handguns - accurate at longer ranges, and more deadly in the effects of their bullets. Wouldn't a hypothetical gun banning person want to ban those before notoriously inaccurate, short range handguns?
American courts recognize that self defense is a legitimate use of lethal force. And many in this country possess the means to deliver it. In England, first they registered weapons, then they took away handguns (sporting and hunting weapons will always be allowed! honest!) then they took away all guns. Now, it is illegal for a British citizen to defend himself in any manner, with or without a gun. Gun ownership is not essentially about home defense, sporting use, hunting, collecting, or any of these reasons.
Gun ownership is political, and is as essential to our freedom as the other rights that are protected by the Bill of Rights. The writings of the founding generation make clear that they conceived of gun ownership as the bedrock right. It ensured all the others, because an armed populace - the militia - was the last defense agaisnt tyranny. Revolutionary era writers did not think of the militia like our modern national guard. It was the able-bodied male citizenry. All of them, who were expected to be armed. In times of war, the militia would enter federal service, but it existed outside the regular army that was permitted to the government by the constitution.
Many of the founders felt that gun ownership (along with Christian faith) were the two things that would reliably produce good citizens for the Republic1ed. I almost said "Republican citizens" but decided to be more ecumenical. They felt that the discipline and responsibility necessary to be a law abiding gun owner are the same needed to be a good citizen in a republic - to be an independent, self reliant citizen; rather than a meek subject, dependent on the government for protection.
I have recently read some interesting articles on this subject - including one that discussed the semantics of the 2nd Amendment. I will dig up those links over the weekend. But for the first 150 years of our republic, it was universally taken for granted that the 2nd Amendment granted an individual right to bear arms, and that there could be very little restriction of that right. Gun technology has not advanced so much in the last seventy years to make this irrelevant. There are very few restrictions on free speech (rightly), and most involve not speech itself, but the effects of that speech. (Libel or slander (can't remember which) and the "Yelling fire in a theater" scenario.) Murder and assault are illegal whether they are done with guns, knives, rocks, poison, gas trucks, dropping ten ton safes on people, or strangling them with your bare hands. There should be no restrictions on a citizen's rights to bear arms, as the constitution clearly states. (I will grant that felons and the mentally insane might be denied, and minors without adult supervision. Voting rights are denied to these categories of people without much fuss.)
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Doctors' orders-- no blogging for me until my wrist heals. Crud.
I will leave you for the short term with this: Buckethead, explain how a handgun ban would violate the 2nd Amendment's militia clause (clause? it's the whole thing), especially if such a ban explicitly excluded hunting rifles and shotguns. If I'm gonna defend my home, a nice boom-stick is the way to go. I understand I'm stirring the pot a bit (a bit??) here, but I've been doing some heavy thinking about this recently and I'd like to hear Buckethead's defense of the liberal interpretation of the second amendment.
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Ashcroft takes time out of his busy day busting glass-pipe makers and fornicators to beg for more double-secret powers against terrorists. Not gonna happen, zippy.
You know what really frosts my bagel about Ashcroft (and also Tony Scalia)? They both claim to be strict constructionists (well... Ashcroft used to), yet when strict constructionism would trump their personal moral order, they ignore the standard, and then deny doing so. I don't have a problem with strict constructionism-- it's consistent, often fair, and eminently sensible as a policy. But if it's rolled out only when convenient, it becomes as meaningless as consulting the Tarot on matters of policy, law, and jurisprudence. An Attorney General who consults his personal morality before consulting the law is a bad Attorney General✶Morality does come into play. Always does. It just doesn't bat leadoff. M'kay?.
Oh, and also? This secret-disappearance-and-detention thing, even if it only happens to Suspected Terror People, is creepy beyond words and rather un-American.
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In-teresting. Joshua Micah Marshall has discovered that the transcript of the Paul Wolfowitz interview linked to below by Buckethead is, well, less than complete. He has isolated at least one exchange that was left out of the Official Compleat Version. Huh. Without resorting to wild-eyed conspiracy-mongering, it does raise the question of whether other portions were left out. Fact check that ass, Joshua! Fact check that ass!
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Insta-man notes that the Guardian has taken down from their website the story about Wolfie, and notes elsewhere that they were quoting from a translation from German of Wolfowitz' original English remarks. While not exactly a retraction (unlike the Powell/Straw meeting-that-wasn't), the Guardian no longer is posting the story as news.
Well, looks like I was wrong about what Wolfie said, or at least about the context and intent.
Buckethead-- yes, we do want our politicians to talk policy. However, we also want to have the cake too. As my crony Bridget pointed out, Wolfie has been acting recently like a diplomat speaking to diplomats in private, when he should probably be speaking like a politician.
I seem to have heard of this Harry Potter person. English, is he? Some sort of mystic?
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It looks like certain types are always going to quote him out of context to make their own political points. Perhaps he missed an opportunity to shut up, but shouldn't we want our leaders to be discussing matters of policy? I thought that's what they're supposed to do.
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Amazon is reporting that it has received over one million orders for the new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book, due out June 21. That's twice the number it received for number four, H.P. and the Goblet of Fire. I personally can't wait for Amazon to ship mine, so I have mine on reserve at the local Borders.
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Instapundit links to a post that makes a good point, though Insta makes his own point a bit inelegantly. The full text of Wolfie's speech suggests that he made his "sea of oil" quote in regard to the ineffectiveness of economic sanctions against Iraq. That is, North Korea doesn't have oil, therefore sanctions are possible, but Iraq has lots of oil, which they can always sell to mitigate the effects of sanctions. Nevertheless, I'm thinking Wolfie would have done very well not to have brought it up. To paraphrase Jacques Chirac, he missed a golden opportunity to keep his fat yap buttoned.
Interesting to see where this one is gonna go. I may have jumped on this grenade a bit too soon, but hey, it's pretty early to tell either way.
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If you look just at the quote from the Guardian, there is sense there. Before the libervation, we had good reason to believe that Saddam was developing or had developed WMD. Compare the situation to North Korea. North Korea, despite its nastiness, does not either sit on, or threaten neighbors that sit on, a natural resource essential not merely for us, but for the entire free world. Which of two vile dictatorships do you target first? That is not shallow thinking, in my opinion. We seem to have a list of nations that we would like to do something about. It makes sense to prioritize that list based on a combination of immediate threat, geopolitical significance, and ease of operations against them.
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